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Pennsylvania Germans: an Interpretative Encyclopedia

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Pennsylvania Germans: an Interpretative Encyclopedia BOOK REVIEWS Pennsylvania Germans: An Interpretative Encyclopedia. Edited by Simon J. Bronner and Joshua R. Brown. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2017. $80. Pennsylvania German studies have been dominated by two tracks: one focusing on the history of the group and its cultural expressions beginning in the colonial period and the other, more recent and more ethnographic in nature, concentrating on contemporary developments among Amish and Old Order Mennonites and the concurrent rise in tourism, which often is sparked by outsiders’ interests in those same groups. Folklorist Simon J. Bronner of the Harrisburg campus at Pennsylvania State University and Joshua R. Brown, professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Clair, unite these two academic tracks—historical and contemporary—in their broadly conceived volume on Pennsylvania Germans. Bronner and Brown have engaged sixteen additional contributors in what is subtitled an “Interpretative Encyclopedia.” The majority of the scholars drawn to this endeavor are based in the United States, at academic and cultural institutions such as the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies of Elizabethtown College, Millersville and Kutztown universities, and the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center. Mark Häberlein of Otto-Friedrich-University in Bamberg, Germany, is the sole European contributor; he adds to the volume a chapter entitled “The Old World Background.” Running over 500 pages, the book is divided into a preface and introduction by the editors, two sections that form the body of the volume, and a very useful and extensive reference list. The first section, on “History and Geography,” provides an overview of the Pennsylvania Germans as a group in three chronologically oriented chapters by Häberlein, John B. Frantz, and Diane Wenger and Bronner. This beginning is more synthetic than original, but it provides important background to help understand the material in the more lengthy second section, entitled “Culture and Society,” which includes sixteen chapters. The history and geography section is also an important contribution to the field because it condenses extensive scholarship on the Pennsylvania Germans from immigration through today into just fifty-five pages. In their preface, editors Bronner and Brown refer to this volume as an assessment based on the “new Pennsylvania German studies” (ix). They identify four key ways that the book expands upon previous work. First is its geographic coverage, which includes Pennsylvania, but also other locations where Pennsylvania Germans later settled, not only to the south in Maryland and Virginia, but also to the north in Canada and to the west. Second, there is an emphasis not only on colonial and early national period history but also on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Third, cultural coverage includes material 121 MQR 92 (January 2018) 122 The Mennonite Quarterly Review culture, foodways, medicine, and folklore, as well as language and literature. And fourth, various authors explore the rise of Pennsylvania Dutch tourism and the heritage industry as shaped by Pennsylvania Germans themselves and by others (xi). Several themes permeate the volume. Various authors address the topics of ethnic distinctiveness and cultural identity by exploring the extent to which Pennsylvania German culture developed in the new world versus the old and how it changed over time. Several authors reference a continuum of responses ranging from assimilation to resistance and explore complex cultural interactions between Pennsylvania Germans and others. Using the interpretative framework of “resystemization,” for example, David W. Kriebel in the chapter “Medicine” explains how powwowing—the practice of healing using non-medical, magical means that was brought by early German immigrants—has been adopted by neo- pagan and neo-heathen practitioners who may or may not be of Pennsylvania German descent but are attracted to powwowing’s pre-Christian Germanic ties. A second theme revolves around the importance of Anabaptist history and culture within the field of Pennsylvania German studies. Frantz authors a chapter on “Religion,” Karen M. Johnson-Weiner and Brown on “The Amish,” and Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and Edsel Burge Jr. on “Language Use among Anabaptist Groups.” This last chapter seems a bit out of step coming after a chapter on language and before any discussion of religious beliefs, but it offers important demographic information about the growth of Old Order communities and their role in the continuation of the Pennsylvania German language. Later chapters on “Heritage and Tourism” and “Popular Culture and the Media” by William W. Donner and Bronner, respectively, return to the subject of religious distinctiveness, focusing less on faith than on lived experience and the popular understanding (or misunderstanding) thereof. As is often the case in edited volumes of this magnitude, there is some unevenness across the various chapters. In the best cases, including Mark L. Loudon’s chapter “The Pennsylvania German Language” and Yvonne J. Milspaw’s on “Food and Cooking,” the essays offer concise and well organized overviews of their stated topics. Shelia Rohrer’s chapter “Literature” stands out because she not only summarizes the field as it relates to Pennsylvania German studies but also ties her analysis to larger national literary trends. Donner should also be commended for his ability to link the history of Pennsylvania German schooling in the chapter “Education” to contemporary concerns about bilingual and multicultural education today. Other authors take a different approach. Lisa Minardi’s chapter “Furniture and Decorative Arts,” which is divided into subsections based on materials and object types, emphasizes the evolving study of Pennsylvania German material culture as much as the material culture itself. Historiography is also highlighted in the introduction, all three of the history chapters in the first section, Minardi’s chapter “Fraktur and Visual Culture,” and Bronner’s “Folklore and Folklife.” There is also uneven coverage of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Gabrielle Lanier’s chapter “Architecture and Culture Landscapes” shifts from an account of real places to a more historiographical approach as she moves closer to Book Reviews 123 the present. Her analysis does not extend to the tourist-oriented strip development in Lancaster County or the free stall barns of modern dairy farms. What becomes clear in reading this volume is that it is not intended to be read cover to cover. As in a more traditional encyclopedia, the chapters do well when they stand alone. The contributors have each supplied essays that bring to the fore their own expertise. They do not always provide comparable content or even use the same style of citation. (Most essays have parenthetical author-date citations, but one has endnotes, and several have a combination of endnotes and author- date). There is additionally some repetition between the various essays. However, in using this book as a reference volume, it is clear why Milton Hershey’s story is mentioned in R. Troy Boyer’s chapter “Agriculture and Industry,” Donner’s on “Heritage and Tourism,” and Bronner’s on “Popular Culture and Media”—the reader of one chapter may not have read the others. The history of the founding of the Pennsylvania German Society similarly appears more than once. The editors missed the opportunity in several cases to encourage the authors of the various chapters to dialogue with each other. Milspaw’s chapter on foodways includes references to kitchens that could have been reinforced in Lanier’s chapter on architecture and landscape. Boyer’s chapter on agriculture introduces a chronology of development that likewise could have informed the discussion of the physical layout of the farm. Lewis Miller (1796-1882), a carpenter, artist, and poet from York, Pennsylvania, is mentioned in chapters by Loudon on language and Minardi on visual culture with no recognition that he is the same person. Additionally, both Lanier and Milspaw use images produced by Miller to support conclusions about architecture and foodways, and those images are printed not only in black and white but also in color. Some mention by the authors of the other references to Miller (beyond the index, which lists his first name as Lewis and Louis in two different entries) could potentially have added to the interpretation. As this example may suggest, the illustrations as a whole could be better integrated into the overall project. The book is well illustrated with black-and- white figures interspersed with text and a separate sixteen-page color insert. Some authors, such as Candace Kintzer Perry, who wrote the chapter “Textiles,” make good use of images, keying them to the text and providing clear captions indicating their importance in terms of content. Other images, although provocative and potentially significant, seem to serve more as attention getters rather than critical components to the story. Bronner and Brown imply this volume is transdisciplinary (ix). As a whole, that is an apt characterization. The editors have engaged a wide variety of authors from various fields with varied interests and research questions. But as is often the case among academics, the contributors to this volume are not always able to truly transcend their own disciplines. That type of synthesis is left to the reader. Yet the strength of this volume is that it provides ample material to make the connections. The essays cover material that spans the entire history of the Pennsylvania Germans, whom the editors define as those who arrived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and their descendants. Material on the twentieth century, including World War I and World War II as well as the interwar years, is strong. But so too are descriptions of the much earlier Atlantic passage. 124 The Mennonite Quarterly Review Although described as an encyclopedia, Bronner and Brown’s volume recognizes there is still research to be done in this field. Kriebel calls for more ethnographic work on powwowing. And despite the multitude of chapters, there are still others that could be written.
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